STILL DOING WELL...ON SECOND THOUGHT, HOLD THE FINE CORINTHIAN LEATHER

ou think you had a bad year? Consider the case of Toby Lenk. Some 19 months ago this guy's stake in online toy–seller eToys made him worth $325.8 million–landing him in the 69th spot on our list of technology's 100 richest. At the end of January, Lenk owned stock worth $500,000, not even enough to buy an apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side.

And how about Bill Gates? Last year, his $92.7 billion fortune put him on top of our list and gave him an $80.3 billion lead over Oracle's founder, Larry Ellison. Gates is still in first place, even though $38.3 billion was hacked off his fortune. But now, he's only $12.3 billion ahead of his nemesis, Ellison, on our list. The Oracle founder's decision to switch from client/server computing to an Internet–based model helped boost his fortune by some $29.6 billion, to $42.1 billion, since our last list in November 1999.

Pure Internet moguls were not so fortunate. The hottest Internet stocks of 1999 were hammered in 2000. For all those formerly rich CMGI stockholders with pennies jiggling in their piggy banks, there's good news: You're not alone. CMGI's David Wetherell was knocked off his perch as the 22nd richest last year to 79th this year, having lost 84% of his wealth. Despite the best efforts of ubiquitous ham William Shatner, who cashed out about 25% of his stock before the fall, Priceline's Jay Walker sank from 11th to 91st; at last count he was worth $190 million. Time magazine's former Man of the Year, the preternaturally optimistic Jeff Bezos, fell from seventh with $7.3 billion, to 16th this year, with $2.3 billion. Search engine software was hit hard along with portals; thus, Inktomi put three guys on the list in 1999 and none this time around (Chief Scientist Eric Brewer saw his fortune slip from $460 million to $80 million).

That said, stocks of companies that build and maintain the Internet's infrastructure held up surprisingly well–and some even delivered gains. Networking companies such as Sycamore, Broadcom, and Juniper made their richest shareholders much richer.

Software and hardware companies also held up well. When Handspring, founded by the inventors of the PalmPilot, went public this year, all three cofounders made the top 100. And Rich List veteran Sanjiv Sidhu from i2 Technologies is worth $6.8 billion, up 583% from less than a billion dollars last year.

This list includes a total of 33 billionaires (compared to 30 the previous year), 12 of them new ones. Still, the total wealth this year was $25.9 billion less than last time around. But get this: Subtract Microsoft's three richest and the rest of the list is richer than last year's also–rans.

It actually was a little tougher to get on the list this year as well. The last spot belongs to Susan Orr, a former director of Hewlett–Packard, with $182.9 million. A year ago, No. 100, Steve Kirsch of Infoseek, needed just $167.4 million to make the cut. The 30th spot on this year's list cost $1.37 billion and belongs to Vincent Smith from Quest Software; last year that spot was claimed by Apple's Steve Jobs with $1.02 billion. (Jobs has $1.38 billion this time around, which gets him the No. 29 spot.)

After last year's stumble, it's easy to forget that the technology sector has created enormous amounts of wealth in recent years. So we should note that, while the $256.6 billion total wealth of our 100 richest doesn't quite measure up to the 1999 figure, it far surpasses the $152.9 billion figure of two years ago and the $108.6 billion of three years ago. Turns out that the old saying is mostly right: The rich, as a group at least, may not always get richer. But their tendency to accumulate wealth even in tough times is awfully impressive. And if that isn't an old saying, well then, it should be.

Methodology: Values calculated using closing stock prices as of January 30, 2001. Holdings taken from most recent proxies filed with SEC. Includes only shares and options beneficially owned as defined by the SEC. List confined to individuals associated with information technology companies (public as of January 30, 2001), excluding telecom and biotech companies. Must have been employed by company or retired within the last year. Past stock sales and outside holdings included, when possible.

Rank/Name/AgePositionCompany/LocationHoldings/Estimated Wealth Type of Business

Bill Gates has lost a jaw–dropping $38.3 billion since our last list. It wasn't just the court order to break up the company that caused Microsoft stock to sink last year. Gates' monopoly has had less–than–stunning Internet initiatives, and then there's the slowdown in PC sales. Still, he's got more than a little spare change. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation awarded nearly $1.5 billion in 2000, mainly to combat disease in the Third World and improve education in the U.S.

He's still not Master of the Universe, but he's gaining ground. Remember, this is a guy who has won the deadly Sydney–to–Hobart sailing race and hired private investigators to dig through Microsoft's trash.

Since leaving Microsoft's board of directors, Allen has plunged into his venture capital firm, Vulcan Ventures; his sports franchises (the Seattle Seahawks and the Portland Trail Blazers); musical history (the Experience Music Project, a new interactive music museum); and his band, Grown Men. Meanwhile, the value of his Microsoft shares dropped $19 billion last year.

The Embalmer hasn't had it easy since becoming CEO in January 2000. The courts ordered a breakup, hackers broke through company firewalls, Microsoft fell short of earnings estimates for the first time in 10 years, and the stock is down 36% since March 2000. Ballmer is busy heading up Microsoft's ambitious Web–based .Net platform and studying Jack Welch's book to find ways to jump–start growth at the world's biggest software maker.

Intel's cofounder spent much of the past year giving his money away. He donated $12.5 million to SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Then, using $5 billion of his Intel stock, he created the nation's seventh–largest charitable foundation, the Gordon E. and Betty I. Moore Foundation, to fund scientific research, education, and environment preservation.

The king of the direct sales model suffered a $12.7 billion loss to his net worth last year as Dell stock sank 67%. But consider this: Dell now heads up the world's leading maker of desktop PCs, business notebooks, and workstations, and the No. 2 producer of servers. Not too shabby for the still–boyish billionaire who started with a measly $1,000 back in '84.

The value of Sidhu's 40% stake in the company he started in his bedroom 12 years ago fell 50% (or $6.76 billion) since last spring as the high–flying B2B sector flew off the tracks. The wealthiest Indian immigrant in America has said that growing up in chaotic India helped prepare him for the turbulent Internet business. Indeed, he orchestrated i2's $9.3 billion merger with Aspect Development last year, the biggest software deal ever.

Samueli (calm, religious) and Nicholas (brash, into sky–diving and Metallica) formed their unlikely friendship long before they joined the New Economy billionaires club. The pair met at TRW in 1981. Now they head up Broadcom, a leading supplier of chips for cable modems, set–top boxes, and DSL. The firm posted 172% earnings growth in 2000, thanks largely to Nicholas' hard–charging management.

Rank/Name/AgePositionCompany/LocationHoldings/Estimated Wealth Type of Business

Pierre Omidyar, 33Founder, ChairmaneBay, San Jose, CA70.5M/$4.02B

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EBay users weren't the only ones looking to sell last year. Witness the stock's more than 50% decline–and Omidyar's $6.5 billion loss. No doubt Omidyar is consoling himself from his home in Paris, where he's working on eBay's overseas expansion. He and his wife, Pamela, also made a little progress toward their goal of giving away 99% of their fortune during their lifetimes: The pair donated $10 million to their alma mater, Tufts University. Just another $4 billion to go.

Morgridge was bitten by the tech bug in 1957 when an IBM salesman sold the then–Air Force officer on a career in the computer business. The rest, of course, is Silicon Valley history: As Cisco's chairman, Morgridge grew the company from $5 million in sales to more than $1 billion. These days he spearheads Cisco's education programs, which are aimed at encouraging students to join the New Economy.

Since picking up stakes and moving to California, the computer maker has seen its revenue growth slow, even losing money during the past holiday season. At the end of January, Waitt took back the company's reins as CEO. Former CEO Jeff Weitzen, who first suggested that Gateway make the move west, lasted a little more than a year. Waitt replaced much of the executive team with old execs from the days in North Sioux City, South Dakota.

The Egans' recent move to sell cheaper storage puts EMC head–to–head with the darling of the low–end storage space, Network Appliance. While this should keep EMC's growth strong, it's likely to squeeze margins going forward. That's one reason why the stock is down more than 30% since late September. Still, it's foolish to bet against Richard, an ex–Marine who helped build the Apollo Guidance Computer and currently sits on George W. Bush's Technology Council.

PeopleSoft–and Duffield's fortune–were in the dumps when we compiled last year's list. (The poor guy's shares were worth a mere $694.9 million.) But CEO Craig Conway, who replaced Duffield, has engineered a stunning comeback powered by rocketing software sales. The stock nearly quadrupled from the middle of June into January. Ceding the CEO title must have stung, but now Duffield is back in the billionaires club.

In 2000 Jeff Bezos endured by far the worst year since he founded Amazon.com in 1995. Analysts predicted the company could run out of cash in 2001; company President Joseph Galli left for VerticalNet; and the stock dropped 79%, costing Bezos $7.1 billion. But nothing seems to dampen his ebullient optimism. Bezos writes off speculation about Amazon running out of cash as "pure hogwash."

Once a simple Canadian gas pumper, Skoll went on to become eBay's head of strategic planning and one of Canada's five richest people. Not bad, eh? Lately, Skoll has cut back, devoting more time to philanthropy: He has donated $50 million to a Silicon Valley foundation and $7.5 million to the University of Toronto, and is backing a new program to encourage Canadian tech entrepreneurs. Oh, and he finally replaced his '89 Mazda RX–7 with a new car–but only because the Mazda broke down.

Louisiana native Filo always said that Yahoo's stock was too pricey. He probably didn't think it was overvalued by more than 85%, though–which is what investors who pummeled Yahoo shares last year decided. The yin to No. 19 Jerry Yang, Filo avoids the limelight, preferring to lose sleep obsessing over Yahoo's technology.

Yang, a big Paul McCartney fan, maybe was amazed as Yahoo's stock price sank more than 85% last year. But the loss probably doesn't matter much to him. He always claimed not to care about the money. Besides, even after losing $2 billion in a year, his fortune still is greater than the GDPs of many countries.

Networking veteran Deshpande cofounded Coral Network Corporation in 1988 and later started Cascade Communications, which he sold for $3.7 billion. Since '98, he's been steering Sycamore Networks through the competitive optical–networking space. The firm is already profitable. Deshpande's 20.8% stake makes him our richest rookie.

Rank/Name/AgePositionCompany/LocationHoldings/Estimated Wealth Type of Business

Jeff Hawkins, 43CofounderHandspring, Mountain View, CA40.7M/$1.72B

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In 1992 Hawkins cofounded Palm Computing with friends Donna Dubinsky (No. 37) and Ed Colligan (No. 93) and was the genius behind the Palm's design. Six years later, the trio founded Handspring. The firm's red–hot handheld device, the Visor, is among the fastest–selling computer hardware products ever.

The hyperactive, fiercely competitive Smith (with No. 20 Gururaj Deshpande) built Cascade Communications from a one–man operation into a major player in the telecom equipment market. In 1998 he headed Deshpande's latest brainchild, Sycamore Networks. That move snared the serial entrepreneur almost 20% of the company, placing him just two spots down from his boss.

Semiconductor packaging and testing company Amkor is a true case of East meets West. The firm–whose name is a combination of "America" and "Korea"–was founded by former Villanova economics professor Kim in 1968. The dutiful first son started Amkor as the U.S. marketing arm of Anam, his father's Korean–based semiconductor firm. By 1998 Amkor was the world's leading independent chipmaker. Kim's net worth took a $3.6 billion tumble last year thanks to the PC slowdown, but he has been through hard times before: When the company struggled to meet payroll in the '70s, Kim's wife, Agnes, helped raise cash by selling calculators and radios from a mall kiosk–which eventually became Electronics Boutique, a worldwide electronics firm.

Sun Microsystems, run by the hockey–lovin', Gates–hatin' McNealy, powers some of the most heavily trafficked sites on the Net and represents a full 48% of the $15.4 billion Unix servers market (Hewlett–Packard, the closest competitor, has a 23% share of Unix revenues). McNealy is bracing for a tough year, cutting spending and hiring, as the dot–com shakeout continues.

Kriens is among a lucky few folks in the technology sector to have gotten much, much richer last year: His fortune is up 157%. The reason: Juniper keeps killing Cisco with its high–end routers, which sell for around $400,000 a pop. The firm's technology is six to nine months ahead of its bigger rival's, helping Juniper grab 30% of the market just two years after it began shipping products. Kriens' fortune, though, hiccuped at the end of the year, as Juniper shares fell 48% from their $244.50 October peak, due to investor worries about slumping demand for its products.

This former Bell labs physicist held up better than many last year. As tech shares began their long slide last March, shares of Finisar, which makes fiber–optic subsystems, soared to an all–time high. Fears of a spending slowdown from telecom equipment firms eventually sent the stock tumbling, although the shares still sport an eye–popping 134 P/E on this year's earnings.

Legendary venture capitalist Vinod Khosla calls Sindhu "tech's biggest unsung hero." The Juniper founder and former Xerox PARC principal scientist has expanded routers' capabilities, making Juniper the only company so far to seriously threaten Cisco and permanently alter the Internet's backbone technology. Pretty smart. He also was bright enough to know that he made a better CTO than CEO, and after running the company for seven months, relinquished the reins to No. 25, Scott Kriens, in 1996.

Long Islander Garofalo dropped out of college to work for his dad's Brooklyn–based electrical contracting company. There he developed his business plan: install fiber underneath cities and sell the rights to use it to corporations. Garofalo eventually mortgaged his house and borrowed against the family business to expand Metromedia. By 2004 the company will have 3.6 million miles of fiber optics in cities around the world.

Despite Pixar stock's 10% loss and Apple stock's 70%–plus nosedive, Jobs made a lot of money in 2000. Desperate to get Jobs to ditch the "interim" part of his title, the Apple board granted him 6.2% of the company's stock and a GulfStream V jet–a package that at the time was worth more than $500 million.

After failing as a ski bum, he started a venture capital firm in 1993, which is how he got to know No. 52 David Doyle, who started Quest in 1994 to make software for Oracle databases. They took the company public in August 1999. When the dust cleared, Smith was worth $3.4 billion.

The iconoclastic Morean gave up the title of CEO in September. He must have wondered if he had done the right thing: The stock promptly lost two–thirds of its value, and Morean lost $1.5 billion. But things are looking up: In January the company inked a $4 billion, three–year deal with London–based telephone equipment maker Marconi. The stock jumped almost 30% on the news, and Morean made back a healthy $219 million.

A die–hard biker who hangs out at the infamous motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota, Ricketts watched his fortune go for a dizzying ride last year: Ameritrade shares were down 67%. In September he reclaimed the co–CEO position he had given up four months earlier.

The man who made Computer Associates the world's third–largest software company, behind Microsoft and Oracle, watched his wealth plummet more than 40% in one day last July after CA warned that first–quarter earnings per share would come in at least 39 cents below expectations. One month later Wang stepped down as CEO. He'll now focus on business development and work on another turnaround, the NHL's New York Islanders.

Case, a devout Christian, must have felt like the Biblical Job in 2000. The merger of AOL and Time Warner, announced in January of that year, was supposed to turn his Internet blue chip into a real–world blue chip. But investors pummeled the stock because it was no longer a pure Internet play; then they dumped it for being an Internet stock when that sector tanked. The stock fell more than 50%–and Case lost $870.2 million. Even his charitable donations caused him problems: Gay–rights groups attacked Case for gifts to anti–homosexual Christian organizations.

Robert Galvin joined the family business as a stock boy in 1940. Few of the ensuing 60 years were as difficult as 2000: The stock fell 58%, and Papa Galvin lost $1.3 billion. But his remaining stake in the company makes his retirement, shall we say, secure.

Under the guidance of the 6–foot–2, 220–pound Reyes, Brocade has muscled its way into the $35 billion data storage market. Revenues for the leading maker of fiber channel switches used in storage area networks grew 389% during the last fiscal year, while earnings soared 800%. Unfortunately, Reyes' personal fortune didn't make out so well: The value of his Brocade holdings fell from $1.1 billion in October 2000 to $880 million by year's end.

Donna Dubinsky has been battling Microsoft her whole career–and lately she's been winning. In 1992 she joined No. 21 Jeff Hawkins and No. 93 Ed Colligan to found Palm, where the trio created the PalmPilot–the fastest–selling new computer product ever. They sold Palm to U.S. Robotics in 1995 and in July 1998 started Handspring, where they repeated their success: The company's dexterous Visor PDA has seized a 23% market share. Meanwhile, Microsoft's handheld computers repeatedly have floundered.

Chen is still on this list by virtue of his 22% stake in BroadVision, the e–commerce software company he founded in 1993. This despite the company's stock performance: BroadVision shares have dropped almost 90% from their peak last March, and Chen's stake has sunk by $4.5 billion. Still, BroadVision remains the e–commerce platform to beat.

Shares of Finisar bucked the telecom trend during much of 2000, climbing 56% through last September. Investors liked the promise of a company whose products enable cool things like TV telephones. Rawls went on a buying spree, spending stock to buy two optical–component firms, a laser diode maker, and a company that tests performance on Ethernet networks. Still, the stock dropped 38% from October through the end of the year, costing Rawls $366.3 million.

Vinciarelli, a former Princeton physics professor, lost $408 million in a little more than a week last February when Vicor stock plummeted 50% on news that two major customers were curtailing or eliminating purchases of the power–converter company's new products. Vinciarelli regrouped, leading his company to 78% earnings growth in 2000. Although Vicor narrowly missed its fourth–quarter estimates, analysts expect earnings to almost double in 2002.

This once–hot data mining company's motto is "Intelligence Everywhere"–but the people in the bookkeeping department ain't so smart. MicroStrategy shares took a 70% nosedive during two days last March, when the company announced it overstated 1999 revenues by 25% and posted a loss for the year–not its previously reported profit. Since then, the stock is down another 85%, and Saylor (who owns 55% of the firm) and other company executives have been ordered to pay out more than $10 million in fines and stock to the SEC–the largest penalty ever for such misconduct. Total decline in Saylor's wealth since our last list: $161.2 million.

The company that makes educational software for the K–12 set received excellent grades from shareholders when the stock soared 200% last year. That made this husband–and–wife team, who own 72% of the company, $274.6 million richer.

Country boy Krach nearly lost the farm since our last list: Arch rival Commerce One won a hotly contested battle to provide the technological backbone for GM's Web exchange. Ouch. Krach had spent 10 years at General Motors, managing the company's robotics unit. Still, Ariba could become one of the youngest companies in history to hit $1 billion in annual sales.

Whitman is the Internet's No. 1 glamour girl, appearing in Glamour and Vanity Fair. While eBay stock is down more than 50% since last March, it was one of the few Internet firms to beat analysts' earnings estimates and raise its sales forecast for 2001. Now that's sexy stuff.

Last summer Scifres (another Xerox PARC alum) called his old buddy Jozef Straus (No. 74), CEO of JDS Uniphase, for a chat. A few weeks later, the two firms announced their $41 billion merger–the largest ever seen in the tech world. The combination creates a fiber–optics component giant with annual sales of $2.7 billion–and nets Scifres, who holds more than 200 patents for lasers and fiber–optics technologies, a $75 million retention bonus.

Cook's push to turn Quicken into the ultimate one–stop personal finance portal didn't help his fortune last year: Intuit stock slid 34% in 2000, even though the firm exceeded analysts' earnings estimates in three consecutive quarters. But Intuit–which Cook founded after his wife complained about paying the bills by hand–is still cooking, with an 80% share of the small–business accounting software market.

Since earning a PhD from the California Institute of Technology, Nettles' career has spanned 30 years and five companies. Ciena has been his most successful. From January to October, shares skyrocketed more than 400%, but then they floundered during the rest of 2000, due to worries that financial troubles at the firm's customers–about 40 telecom carriers, some of the largest overseas–would crimp demand for Ciena's products.

McDonnell's firm, spun off by EMC, was one of the IPO success stories of 2000. On its first day, the stock sizzled to a 305% gain. Investors love the firm's leadership in high–end fiber–optic switches for storage area networks, a market expected to grow 120% annually during the next four years.

Often credited with sculpting Microsoft's business infrastructure, Shirley now concentrates on philanthropic efforts like Seattle's Olympic Sculpture Park. He also drives race cars alongside celebrities, sports heroes, and other plain old rich folks who share his Speed Racer fantasies.

Glaser managed to make our list again even though slower advertising revenue growth and increased competition from arch rival Microsoft led to a 90% decline in RealNetworks' stock price by the end of 2000. And he'll probably make our list next year as well: RealNetworks owns 85% of the streaming media market and has crucial partnerships with America Online, Nokia, and Sony. The firm's success has helped Glaser pursue another interest: He has become a co–owner of the decidedly low–tech Professional Bowlers Association.

A leading manufacturer of integrated circuits, Atmel leads the market in smart credit card technology. In the '80s Perlegos, a reserved, family–oriented man, founded the company on the proverbial shoestring after a stint at Intel. Atmel's semiconductors are being used in cell phones, digital cameras, DVD players, and set–top boxes as well as those credit cards. Speaking of which, wonder what the spending limit of Perlegos' Visa is?

Cofounder Doyle (who owns 16% of Quest) made his first million by age 30, and life has only improved since then. These days he spends some of that wealth on wine (his cellar is stocked with 10,000–plus bottles) and real estate (he's looking to buy a $7.1 million penthouse in Sydney, Australia, where he'll no doubt stockpile Shiraz).

Good news was in short supply last year. Johnson, who owns 20% of the company, watched his wealth plummet as Foundry shares suffered a meltdown, plummeting 90%. One problem: weakening demand for high–performance networking products.

Little lost a lot ($391.8 million) since our last list. Portal's stock fell 84%, thanks to weak demand by B2B and ASP companies. Still, that didn't stop Little from winning an Entrepreneur of the Year award or making our list again–the latter due to his 25% ownership stake in Portal.

Milton Chang has a knack for turning anything he touches into gold. The former CEO of optical–equipment maker Newport, Chang has incubated a host of successful optical–networking startups and was a seed investor in Uniphase (now JDS Uniphase). These days this Pied Piper for talent is lighting up the charts at New Focus, where revenue grew more than 250% in 2000.

A 20–year veteran of Microsoft's trenches, Jeff Raikes huddles in the officers' tent alongside Napoleon–er, Gates–and Ballmer, helping them orchestrate the moves of Microsoft's armies. Raikes leads the charge to revolutionize Web and desktop applications through the power of XML. It had better work, if Raikes is going to recoup the $91.7 million he has lost since his appearance as No. 51 on last year's list.

Now hear this: Just seven months after its IPO, Sonus has become the leading provider of voice–over–packet technology, a market that should reach $19 billion by 2003. Much of the credit goes to Ahmed, a networking veteran who was once CTO at Cascade Communications, where he worked with Cascade cofounders Gururaj Deshpande (No. 20) and Dan Smith (No. 22).

Cisco had a market cap of $600 million and annual sales of $1.2 billion when Chambers took the helm in January 1995. He has been, shall we say, successful: Last spring Cisco's market cap exceeded $500 billion and annual sales hit 12.2 billion. The stock subsequently tumbled with the rest of the tech industry, shaving $770 million off Chambers' fortune by year's end. But don't feel too bad–at least he has friends to lean on. Last June, Indiana University endowed a $1.2 million chair in his name at its Kelley School of Business.

Things are clicking for Ferro, who owns 35% of Click Commerce. The firm's sell–side B2B software helps companies share info about orders, inventory, marketing, and the like with dealers and distributors. The savvy dealmaker also has partnered with Microsoft and Commerce One. "I like to date all the pretty girls," said the metaphor master in a recent article.

Skeen and Chang are, without a doubt, the brainiest couple on our list. They have his–and–hers PhDs, his in distribution management systems, hers in database management systems. (Imagine the scintillating dinnertime conversation.) They founded their first company, the highly successful Teknekron Software Systems (now Tibco Software) in 1986. In 1994 they founded e–business software firm Vitria and watched its stock skyrocket and then crash, losing nearly 90% of its value last year. Gives new meaning to "For better or worse, for richer or for poorer."

Once the president of Westinghouse's wireless data group, Oros has long envisioned a world without wires. Now he's furthering that vision at Aether (translation: "air of the gods"), which makes software that helps deliver data over wireless networks.

When Ong (full name: Peng Tsin Ong) was a schoolboy in Singapore, a visiting Japanese teacher let him play with a homemade computer. Ong later taught himself programming from a manual. "It was the only thing that actually did what we told it to do," he says. He has come a long way: Ong now chairs Web management firm Interwoven and is helping to set up its Asian operations.

John and Susan Ocampo are on this year's list courtesy of Stanford Microdevices' IPO, one of last year's most successful new issues. To remain competitive in the tight integrated–circuit market, Stanford Microdevices has expanded its product line and bolstered international sales. The only fly in the Ocampos' soup: Stanford University is suing Stanford Microdevices for trademark infringement

Founder Johnson (who once ran several gyms) announced that he won't receive cash or stock compensation until the company becomes profitable, which may happen by the end of this year. That should help to bolster the company's stock price, which fell from a high of $82 to $17 last year.

Last June, Ray Lane and Larry Ellison agreed in a telephone conversation that Lane would step down from his post at Oracle. Don't worry about Lane, though: He has moved on to the firm he calls the New York Yankees of venture capital: Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

Walter Alessandrini has made a career out of speed. The native Italian headed up Union Switch & Signal, a leading equipment supplier to railroads and mass–transit systems, before boarding the high tech express. Customers love Avanex for its photonics technology, which makes fiber–optic networks more efficient.

Jain made his fortune (he owns 19% of InfoSpace) by supplying content such as Yellow and White Pages, third–party weather reports, and stock quotes to more than 3,200 Web sites. The stock is way down, but most analysts say that Jain–the restless, aggressive self–promoter who works 20–hour days and is so focused on success that he claims not to have any hobbies–can make InfoSpace a wireless winner as that market gathers momentum.

Wall Street momentarily got buzzed on Blue Martini last year: Shares of the customer interaction software maker soared 174% at its July IPO. Then the hangover set in, and the stock sank like a garlic–stuffed olive in a glass of Bombay Sapphire. Zweben, a former comanager of NASA's artificial intelligence lab, saw his 40% stake in Blue Martini fall from $1.9 billion in August to $190 million by Christmas. Oh, well, Zweben can always pursue his other dream: becoming a jazz guitarist.

It took cojones to go public in October, when the tech meltdown seemed never ending. But South African transplant Ginsberg figured Ixia would bloom as brightly as the flowering plant it's named after. He was right: The firm, which helps maximize network performance, saw its stock rise 57% on its first day of trading.

Hluchyj (pronounced Hiloochi) cofounded voice–and–data switch maker Sonus in 1997 and took the company public last May. The stock acted like a '99 dot–com, jumping 120% on its first day and climbing more than 1,000% through early August, making MIT–educated Hluchyj briefly worth $658.2 million. The stock subsequently dropped 73% but ended 2000 still up 229%.

In February Cabletron was criticized for abandoning brand identity when it split into four subsidiaries, each with a different telecom role. But until recently the company was beating Wall Street's expectations, and shareholders were happy.

Lewin and Leighton are MIT brainiacs with roots in applied mathematics and advanced computer science. These guys can freestyle algorithms in their sleep. Plus, Lewin's experience in the Israel Defense Forces should come in handy as the battle for Internet content delivery gets bloodier.

Straus is, shall we say, eccentric. The native Czech (he fled weeks before the 1968 Soviet invasion) always wears a black beret and two wristwatches–one for his home in Ottawa and one for wherever he's visiting. He literally dances around JDS Uniphase headquarters, quotes from The Little Prince during conference calls with analysts, and once described himself as "just a guy who has to go home and change his underwear."

Koogle's cool, slack aura–he's fond of wearing black, fills his office with guitars, smokes, and goes by the nickname T.K.–belies the calculating strength of his leadership at Yahoo. These days he's leading the company into the B2B space, but investors aren't impressed: The stock is significantly down since last November. Meanwhile, Koogle spends his fortune on racing cars and machining his own parts for the cars.

Just how smart is Don Brown? He earned a medical degree and a master's in computer science at the same time. And he reads Camus–in French! Now he owns 60% of Interactive Intelligence, which makes software that automates call centers and enterprise communications. The company has been off most investors' radar screens. That could change soon: Revenues grew 102% in 2000.

Avanex CTO Simon Cao has 38 patents either secured or pending, and he's responsible for a long list of groundbreaking feats in optical science. He is also a devotee of feng shui, which he applied to the choice of Avanex's headquarters. Maybe that's why so much of the cash that flows through Avanex's doors finds its way to his office.

Last May Kalkhoven stepped down from his position as cochair of JDS Uniphase. The ebullient Aussie was the visionary behind the growth of the company, which he built to address niches in the fiber–optics equipment market and merged with Straus' JDS Fitel in July 1999. He's not through making money: Next up is a venture capital fund.

The youngest of six kids growing up on a farm in northern Connecticut, Wetherell is used to shoveling dung. Investors figured that's what he was doing in 2000, when he insisted that CMGI was fine despite a $1.4 billion operating loss during its first three quarters. Wetherell is reorganizing the company, but you can't make chicken salad out of chicken you–know–what.

Award–winning engineer Greg Olsen made it into tech's 100 richest thanks to selling his Sensors Unlimited to fiber–optics company Finisar in October. In December he sold 3.5 million shares, for a total of more than $100 million, not including the 785,400 shares worth more than $18 million that he gave away.

Vadasz wields enormous influence as head of venture investor Intel Capital. Intel's portfolio is worth $3.7 billion, making the company one of the largest VC investors in the world. Last year Vadasz spearheaded $1.3 billion worth of investments in more than 300 companies. Can you believe this titan drives a 5–year–old dented Jeep?

Embarcadero, which makes software that helps companies build and manage databases, was last year's best–performing IPO–up 350% from its April offering through December. That made cofounder Wong (who owns 20%) a very wealthy man in a year when many tech executives watched their fortunes fade.

Sinclair, the "S" in JDS Uniphase, was a pioneer in fiber optics back in the early '80s, when, along with No. 74, Jozef Straus, he served as one of JDS' "four cooks." Now he's trying to read the future again as head of R&D at Fluorosense, a Canadian firm that makes high tech measuring devices using ultraviolet fluorescence.

Wu's former company, ArrowPoint Communications, handily avoided last year's icy IPO market: Shares of the network switch maker soared nearly 250% at the offering last March. Then Cisco came knocking a month later and ponied up $5.7 billion, its second most expensive acquisition ever.

One of Karmanos' three professional hockey teams is jockeying for first place in its division, and Compuware is also in a bruising competitive battle. The stock, which lost about two–thirds of its value as of the beginning of the year, has since rebounded. The bounce is good news for charities that Karmanos supports, including the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute, in memory of his first wife.

Rank/Name/AgePositionCompany/LocationHoldings/Estimated Wealth Type of Business

JAY WALKER, 46FounderPriceline.com, Norwalk, CT64.1M/$190.2M

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Priceline's old catchphrase, "This is going to be big–really big," now smacks of irony. The firm lost a slew of high profile executives and warned investors about sluggish earnings. Walker slipped 80 spots on this year's list after his wealth dropped some $4.2 billion.

San Diego Padres owner Moores is among the more philanthropically inclined of our 100 tycoons. He sold his $6 million coin collection–including his prize possession, an 1807 gold U.S. Liberty coin–to raise money to fight childhood diseases.

Colligan successfully awed tech junkies and reached the masses when he was vice president of marketing at Palm Computing. Now the frenetic Colligan heads up marketing for Handspring, which he founded with Donna Dubinsky (No. 37) and Jeff Hawkins (No. 21).

The soft–spoken Sri Lankan took control of the world's third–largest software maker in August, when founder Charles Wang (No. 33) bumped himself up to chairman and relinquished the CEO title. In October, Kumar promised to revamp the company, focusing its 1,200 products into three key solution areas.

Serial entrepreneur Gruber decided 21/2 years after college that he would never again work for anyone but himself. In 1997 he jumped when his cousin suggested he pursue his passion for Internet voice packetization. He made a phone call, and within three minutes he had his first funding for Sonus Networks. Good call: The stock surged 900% after its May IPO.

Dell elder statesman Topfer plans to retire at the end of 2001, making this the last year he's likely to grace our list of technology's working rich. The silver–haired tech veteran is likely to split his golden years between his historic home in Austin and his newer house in Las Vegas.

Bonnie, who grew up on a horse farm, took over Cnet's reins last year from Halsey Minor. Most analysts applaud Bonnie's moves to strengthen international operations and gallop into the data services market.

Israeli–born Gilo solidified his reputation in the tech world when Intel bought his first company, DSP Communications, in late 1999 for the princely sum of $1.6 billion, Israel's largest cash buyout. In early 2000 Gilo and two other DSP alums left Intel to focus on the 4–year–old Vyyo, which manufactures components for the wireless broadband industry.

Susan Orr, daughter of the late David Packard and his wife, Lucile, carries on her parents' philanthropic vision at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, among the country's largest nonprofit organizations. Orr's role as supporter of the arts, science, children, and the environment makes her one of the most powerful women in Silicon Valley.